


stood here before (inside the pouring rain)

by wastrelwoods



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: 5+1 Things, Depression, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Juno Steel and the Support Network of Caring Friends, Mental Health Issues, Specific warnings by chapter, super frank discussion of depression and suicidality, the worst part is im pulling this directly from canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-02-11
Packaged: 2018-09-17 20:11:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9341318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wastrelwoods/pseuds/wastrelwoods
Summary: "You gonna stick around?"5 times Juno's friends were there to love and support him, +1 time he caught on





	1. Mick Mercury

**Author's Note:**

> title from 'king of pain' by the police, if you're wondering

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1 - Mick helps Juno at the lowest he's ever seen him, after his brother's death

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: references canon child abuse, death of a child, also includes underage drinking which is technically not illegal on mars but we aren't on mars here and now, are we?

(one) 

It’s been a month, almost, and Sasha says nobody’s seen him even leave the house. Mick only knows he’s still alive because he wouldn’t be there to hang up every time he tries to call otherwise. He’s been living in a state of constant fear for weeks that this time, he’ll hear that dial tone. 

Mick’s not naive, he’s sixteen. He’s lost people. Everyone in Oldtown does, sooner or later. Everyone on Mars, really. Everyone in the universe. But there’s a kind of abstract quality to hearing his Mom talk about Mick’s mother walking out on them back when he was in diapers, or hearing stories about someone’s cousin falling off a building, or dying in a gang war. It doesn’t feel real. He’s never lost anyone all that important.

Sasha has. Now Juno has, too. And Mick knows that he can’t possibly know how that feels, remembers J telling him as much with a side of rib-bruising punches the last time he’d tried to get through to him, weeks ago. But there’s a Juno-shaped hole starting to spread through the fabric of his world, and god help him if he isn’t gonna do everything in his power to keep from losing his friend, too. 

J doesn’t even look up when Mick slides through the window, just goes all tense and then buries his face in his pillow with a grunt. He’s sprawled out on his stomach on the bed, glaring at the door. It’s locked from the inside. 

“You’re alive,” he says, aiming for cheerful and landing somewhere in the vicinity of concerned, like it’s a question more than a statement. 

Juno laughs, and even through the fabric it sounds ugly and dark and wrong. Mick settles onto the edge of the bed, leans back against the headboard and tucks his feet up, looking him over carefully. He looks smaller than usual. His dark hair is a frizzy mess, and he smells like sewer water and cheap liquor. Bruises all up his arms, dried blood crusted over the gashes on his knuckles, and Mick can’t look at them without his fingers tingling in sympathy. 

“You look like hell,” he says, because it’s true. 

“Yeah, well,” Juno barks, muffled by the pillow, but hoarse, like they’re the first words he’s spoken in days. “I’m still doing better than you, aren’t I?” It’s the kind of thing he’d usually pair with a wry smile and a teasing elbow, but now it comes out harsh and accusing. Ugly, dark, wrong. Again. Mick frowns, and starts picking at a scab on his knee. 

The silence drags on. Juno makes no move to speak again, and after a couple of minutes Mick isn’t sure he remembers that he’s there. There’s a voice in the back of his mind that sounds like Sasha, telling him to give up, go home, leave J alone. That’s the usual method, when he gets quiet like this, exhausted from the sheer effort of holding it all in. When he gets mean and starts lashing out at Mick and Sasha for no reason. But it’s never been this bad before, and he’s not sure that walking away will help. Might make things worse, actually. 

Lucky for Mick, he’s got a backup plan. “Drink?” 

Juno huffs into the pillow, then rolls onto his side to glare at Mick. He’s got an impressive shiner, broken blood vessel sending a little shoot of red through the white of his eye. Mick can’t help but flinch, seeing it, knowing exactly how he got it. “Why are you even here?” he grunts, defensive. 

“What, a guy can’t bring a lady a birthday present now?” 

“Mick, my birthday isn’t until October.” That sounds better, more like the Juno he knows. 

“So it’s a little early,” he says, popping the cap off the bottle with a flourish and taking a swig. It’s foul.

Finally, Juno sits up. Takes him a minute to get there, his limbs moving slow and stiff like he’s barely in control of them, but he gets there. He takes the bottle when Mick offers it to him, tips it back with a worrying gusto. Doesn’t even cough as it goes down, and Mick knows this stuff burns like nobody’s business. It’s his Mom’s homebrew. “Jesus, J. Take your time, buddy.” 

He knows it’s a mistake when Juno curls back into himself, takes another drink like he’s got a point to prove, and spits a scathing, “You’re not my _nanny_ , Mercury.” 

For a second Mick feels totally lost, like he’s taken his bike a block too far and can’t find his way back no matter which way he turns. He throws up his hands. “Sorry. Like I said, it’s all yours.” 

There’s nothing he can do but wait and hope Juno will offer him a scrap of something to hold on to, so he sits and tries not to wince while his best friend empties the bottle like there’s a prize at the bottom of it. He starts picking at the scab again, but it starts stinging before it’s stopped itching, so he gives up on it and moves on to twirling a lock of hair around his finger. 

It takes a second for him to notice Juno’s eyes burning into him. He can see him, just at the edge of his line of sight, rolling the bottle between his hands and staring at Mick with a totally incomprehensible look on his face. Mick lets him. He’s taking the low road, here. 

“You didn’t answer my question,” he says, at last, and Mick takes this as permission to turn and look him full in the face. Still unreadable. The eye with the bruise blooming around it is swollen half-shut. 

“Question?”

“What you’re doing here,” he clarifies. His thin shoulders are drawn up and together. He looks like a vulture, maybe, or a frightened rabbit about to turn tail and run. 

If he doesn’t know the reason Mick’s here, he’s not sure he’ll be able to explain it if he tries. “What are you, some kind of detective?” he asks, instead, reaching for the bottle. Juno drops it at that. 

Mick has another drink. Juno has several, the tension unwinding from his shoulders slowly. He doesn’t say much of anything else, but with a little sleight-of-hand Mick gets almost a half a glass of water into him before he falls asleep, curled up on his side with Mick’s jacket propped against his back to keep him that way. 

It’s weird to watch him sleep, though, so Mick doesn’t. He wanders around the room, kicks the piles of dirty laundry into one corner, checks and then double-checks the lock on that door. The sun’s rising, bright and blue through the flimsy Oldtown shields. 

He stays until Juno wakes up, just to be safe.


	2. Sasha Wire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2 - sasha leaves mars, but she doesn’t give up on juno

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: canon-typical alcohol use. nothing too gnarly here

(two)

When he gets bad, he can get ugly. That’s something she’s known about Juno practically as long as she’s known him. Sasha doesn’t fault him for it, really, because she knows in the end it’s all down to a handful of faulty synapses and a lifetime of self-medication and a frankly abhorrent set of childhood traumas, plus several other circumstances beyond anyone’s control. No one leaves Oldtown without scars, which is why she jumped at the first chance to get out. 

Well, one reason, anyway. Dark Matters is a very upwardly mobile organization, and Sasha has always been an upwardly mobile individual. The agent in charge of the interview process had called her ‘driven’, but the judgemental quirk of their eyebrow suggested they thought she was running from something. Sasha can’t say whether they were right about that. 

The point is, while she tries her damnedest not to blame Juno for things he cannot control, he has been making every effort to singlehandedly _ruin_ this evening, her last night on Mars. He’s already sent Mick running with a few well-aimed sarcastic words, much to Sasha’s frustration, and now he’s sulking at the far end of the bar, pretending he hasn’t noticed the very pointed glare she’s been sending his way for three minutes.  
She drains the last of her martini and sets it back down against the bar with a little too great a vigor, making the patron next to her jump in her seat. “Pardon me,” she snips, in a tone most people wouldn’t use on such an unsuspecting, polite little phrase. 

At least he’s not rushing headlong into blackout drunk territory, she notes, observing that he’s been nursing the same half-empty glass for a while now. When she stomps over, heels clacking against the floor, he doesn’t look up at her. The low back of the cocktail dress he borrowed from Sasha clashes with his police academy crew-cut, and she wonders if perhaps he objects to the setting. 

It’s no anniversary that she can remember, and she knows for a fact that he hasn’t had the occasion to be unlucky in love for months, now. Just last week, while Mick briefed them on his latest and greatest business enterprise, Juno had sounded so excited about working for the HCPD, bringing justice into the world. Practically as happy as she’s ever known him. So what is it?

“What the hell, Juno?” she snaps, crossing her arms over her chest. 

He’s totally unresponsive for fifteen, twenty seconds. Then he shrugs, takes another sip. “What do you want me to say?” he says. “Congratulations, Agent. You did it. You got out.” Bitter. Mocking. Sasha hates him, for a moment, resentment and anger and frustration all roiling in her gut. 

“You might at least try to pretend to be happy for me,” she says cooly. “For old times’ sake.”

“Ha,” he says, like he’s the only one in on a joke even he doesn’t think is very funny. “Old times. That’s good. That’s real rich, Sasha.” 

“What?” She narrows her eyes at him as he stands, pushes past her.

“Sorry,” he says, still refusing to meet her eyes as he shrugs his awful ratty coat on over top of the dress. “I gotta go.”

“Go?” It’s a crowded bar, even on a weeknight, and it’s all Sasha can do to stay on his heels while the both of them elbow their way outside. It’s a cold night on Mars, sand blowing up under the top of the shields and blocking out the stars with swirling patterns of dark red dust. “Juno Steel,” she says, “I am leaving this planet permanently in five hours, and the least you can do is act like that matters to you at all!”

He goes stock-still at the edge of the curb, hunched over on himself like he’s aged half a century in a second, and quite suddenly Sasha realizes what this is about. She got out. He can’t. He probably never will. She sighs, the anger melting away in almost an instant, and when Juno turns back to her she can see the telltale dampness of his eyes. “Bon Voyage, Sasha,” he says, quiet, infuriatingly sincere. One side of his mouth curls up in a wry smile as he reaches a hand out to hail a cab. “Best of luck out there,” he says as he steps in. 

Sasha holds the door for him, and pushes it shut behind him, and watches the cab pull away with the first pang of real homesickness she’s felt in this whole business. “I’ll miss you too, you idiot,” she whispers after him. 

Later, as the transport takes off, she pulls up a holoscreen and watches the little red dot in the center of it blink. A tracker chip was a fairly unique but extremely utilitarian sign-on bonus, Sasha had thought, and sewn into the collar of Juno’s coat it might be years before he finds it and inevitably throws it out a window. Till then, of course, she can keep an eye on him from afar.


	3. Rita

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> juno walks out on the HCPD. rita follows him

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: honestly, none i can think of, besides a canonical amount of alcohol consumption and the general warning that the writers could totally joss my idea of how juno left the force at any time

(three)

The address on all his old paperwork leads Rita to the part of the city where the camera crews are usually set up to film streams about murder mysteries and gang wars. It’s not the edge of town, but it’s within spitting distance, and she keeps a real close eye on her purse while the bus rattles and rolls its way through Hyperion City traffic. There’s some shifty-looking people in the other seats, and Rita’s stomach does flip-flops while she tries to remember the boxing stance Mr. Steel spent an hour trying to drill into her, months ago. It’s no good, though. Never really stuck. 

Rita’s a Hyperion City girl, born and raised, and she keeps her head down and her eyes low while she shuffles down the street to the right building, then up the stairs to the right floor. She doesn’t breathe in too deep when she smells something awful in the hallway, but she’s not hard-boiled enough to keep herself from jumping and shrieking when she hears a loud clang through the paper-thin walls. Rita spins on her heel and brandishes her bag like a snakeskin-patterned flail, but all the doors stay closed, and there are no more sounds. 

Probably nothing, she tells herself. People have been telling Rita for years that she’s got an overactive imagination, so at least while her brain spins out a dozen possible scenarios from fistfight to torrid love-making to toaster explosion to murder she knows there’s nothing to worry about. Probably. 

It doesn’t look like Mr. Steel is home, after all. No light coming in under the door. His lock is totally busted, one of those cheap manual ones that barely work to begin with, so really, Rita thinks, there’s no harm in poking her head in to look around. She can always come back later. Lord knows she’s going to have the free time from now on. 

She pushes on the door, just to test it, and when that doesn’t work she wraps both her hands around the knob and yanks until something gives way with a sharp crack. Then, she pads softly into the dark apartment. 

Espionage really isn’t as easy as it looks in the movies, Rita thinks to herself, as the faux-wood floor creaks under her shoe. But she’s got bigger problems to worry about than being overheard. There’s a dim light coming in through the kitchen window, shows her the crap littered over every surface. Boxes of half-finished takeout, dirty laundry, files straight from the box on his desk back at the station, a dust-stained ratty coat just lying there in the middle of the floor, and what she hopes to god isn’t a pair of dirty underwear in the sink, or she might just have to turn around and go home. 

Also, there really shouldn’t be so many empty bottles in one man’s apartment. “Oh, Mista Steel, you gotta take better care of yourself,” Rita mutters aloud, wrinkling her nose as the smell registers. 

It’s only because she’s a secretary she finds herself setting her bags down on the table and rustling through the scattered files, trying to put them in some kind of order or at least get them out from under the table. She’s not cleaning up after him or nothing.

One of the files feels too heavy in her hand, and she realizes a second later that’s because it’s all over wet. Rita shrieks and drops the thing, wiping her fingers on her skirt. 

“Who the hell are you, and what are you doing in my-- Oh.” She whirls around to see Mr. Steel standing in the doorway, brandishing a lamp. He ain’t half decent, barefoot and wearing nothing but boxers and his shirt all unbuttoned, and Rita wants to gasp, scandalized, before she remembers that he lives here, and lord knows she’s wandered around her apartment in less than that before. “Rita, what the hell are you doing here?” 

“Mista Steel!” She grins at him, then remembers how much of him she can see and blushes, starts examining the ceiling for interesting water stains while he sets the lamp down and tugs on the first pair of pants he can find. “I was just stopping by to see how you were doing, and wouldn’t you know it, the door was open and everything, so I just...Um, I know it musta been a rough couple of weeks, with the Sarge and all, and it was getting kinda lonely at the station without you there, so here I am!” She peeks down, and sees they’ve sailed back into safer waters.

“The station?” His fingers freeze on the buttons, and he turns a steely gaze on Rita. “They didn’t send you, did they?”

“Course not!” Rita swears, crossing her heart, and then crossing it again in the other direction in case she got it wrong the first time. He looks haggard, like he’s been through hell and back, but he softens at her reassurance, even offers half a smile, the way he used to when he walked past her desk clocking in every morning. Well, except the last few months, of course. 

“I, uh….I’m fine,” he says. Rita’s not a great judge of people face-to-face, but she’s watched enough television that she can recognize acting when she sees it. “Doing great. I’ll be fine. Uh, thanks for stopping by, I guess.” 

It’s like he’s got a whole wall up, or maybe more like a suit of armor. No, more like a riot shield! Yeah, that’s the one. Rita couldn’t break through if she tried. “I, uh, I brought you something!” she says, recalling the reason for her visit abruptly. She tugs one of the bags off the table behind her and reaches in to grab the present, then hesitates. It was an awful long time ago they talked about it, after all, and who knows if he’s still interested? Lots of stuff has changed. 

Still, Rita had busted most of her last HCPD paycheck on getting the thing made, and the least she can do is try. She bites her lip and hands him the little steel plaque. He reaches a hand out for it without thinking, then reads the printed type and goes totally still. 

Rita waits for a full minute, eyes screwed shut, before she can’t take it any more. “Do you, uh...like it? Mista Steel?”

He tears his eyes away from the sign to meet Rita’s, a little crease forming between his eyebrows that could mean a lot of things, good or bad. “You remembered?” he says, a little hoarse. 

“Sure I did, boss--I mean, Mista Steel,” she corrects, shifting on her feet awkwardly. “I thought maybe since you were looking for a new job anyway--You could always do like you said you wanted to do, before. If you’re still interested, I mean. I was lookin’ at this nice office space a few blocks from uptown third floor, real nice view of the city. Frannie knows the owner so we could get a lease real cheap, and I thought, we’re gonna need a sign for the door, or no one’s gonna know where--”

“We?” 

Rita pulls up short, blinking, tracing back over her words to find the thread of his question. “Well, yeah. I mean, I figure every Pee-Eye needs a secretary. You maybe more than most of ‘em.” He’s still quiet, enough that Rita feels a little worried. “Do you...not want a secretary, Mista Steel?” 

“No, I just…” He swallows, looks down at the sign in his hands again, that half a smile creeping onto his face again. “You just caught me by surprise, that’s all.” 

Rita squeals, and hop-skips forward just far enough to throw her arms around him. Mr. Steel flinches, but relaxes into the hug a moment later, letting out a little huff of laughter. “Ooh, we’re gonna make such a great team, boss,” she announces, the sign pressed in between them like the cloned beef in the middle of a sandwich, “Just you wait and see!”


	4. Peter Nureyev

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 4 - there’s a lot of people out there who want juno steel dead, and he doesn’t seem to care. lucky for him, peter nureyev does

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: some blood and injury, canon-typical graphic violence

(four)

The thing about being a thief for hire is that he goes where his employers tell him to go. And the thing about Ancient Martian artifacts is that most of them are on Mars. So Dr. Miasma says fetch, and throws him a couple million creds to give speed to his chase, and he turns on his heel a few feet from the platform onto a ship off Mars and heads back the way he came. 

The thing about Mars that frightens him is for the first time in twenty-five years, he has a connection to the planet, however tenuous. Someone out there who knows him, really knows him, might know more about him than any other living soul, because he knows his name. 

Juno Steel. 

His latest job from Dr. Miasma is absolutely nothing at all to do with Juno Steel, though of course that doesn’t deter the detective from butting in anyway. Peter knew he had a nose for trouble, and a distinct lack of the common sense that usually kept people with a nose for trouble alive. But swallowing the Martian pill, just to keep it away from an adversary he didn’t even know? 

All Peter can say is that he really knows how to pick them. “Oh, Juno,” he laughs, watching the veteran woman Miasma had DiMaggio hire drag the detective onto a stretcher, along with a team of paramedics. He’s thrashing in their grip, turning this way and that like he’s trying to throw off an invisible attacker. The moment Peter speaks, he looks up, staring sightlessly across the street and through the tinted window of the car, directly at him. Peter goes still and silent, chilled to the bone, but in the next moment the detective starts to thrash again and the paramedics swarm around him, blocking him from view entirely. 

Peter sighs, and goes for the burner comms Dr. Miasma had offered along with his first paycheck, months ago. He’s not quite thrilled to report his first failure in all that time. She pays well, but the good doctor can be rather...impatient. She does not tolerate defeat. There have been a series of disappointing thieves in her employ, of which Peter is the latest.

He could get another job, provided she leaves him alive, but--oh, the listings in this quadrant are just so dull. A man can only run collection for Valles Vicky so many times before he yearns for a change. And there are so many worlds to see, after all. 

Peter’s finger hovers over the job postings on the screen in front of him, scrolling absentmindedly until a familiar name pops into view. 

The thing about Juno Steel is that the man makes enemies like no one else Peter has known in years. He’s brusque, and quite determined, and he’s got an overdeveloped sense of justice that thirty-odd years of living in this wild tsunami of a city somehow hasn’t managed to beat out of him. Also, he’s lost himself several powerful friends in a short span of time. 

The number on the contract before him is quite a bit higher than even Peter would have estimated. “Oh, my, you have been busy, detective,” he murmurs. The bidding commenced hours ago. Cecil Kanagawa put the listing up this morning. Juno’s lucky Peter happened upon it when he did, or he might be in real trouble right now. 

Peter abruptly recalls the unhealthy pallor of the detective’s face a few minutes past, the blood painting trails over his skin and hair, the way he’d thrashed like he was trying to escape the inside of his own head, and leans back in his seat, frowning. First step, survive his call with Dr. Miasma. Then, provided Juno’s foolhardy meddling doesn’t kill him in the next few hours, Peter can get to work preventing his assassination. He notes the four or five names posted below the listing, indicating the most interested parties. Several professional contract killers, a former Dark Matters liaison, and a man who appears to be currently employed by the HCPD. In under a minute Peter knows exactly where to find each of them, and the best place to put the knife. 

But there will be time for that later. Keeping his employer waiting will only serve to make things worse. 

There is only one contact programmed into the burner comms. Peter takes a deep breath, schools his face into careful, professional blankness, and makes the call.


End file.
